Enjoying the hard work as a PhD candidate
After graduating from university, you have three options if you wish to continue your scientific career: working at the university, for the industry or for an independent research institute. Floris Fransen and Jeroen Geurtsen choose the latter option. Both men studied biology at the
At the NVI new vaccines are developed, produced and bought for the Dutch vaccine supply. This government program aims to improve the protection of the Dutch population against infection diseases.
The daily job
Fransen and Geurtsen both are working as PhD candidates at the NVI. Most of their tasks are directed at planning, carry out and documenting experiments for their own projects. “The aim of my project is developing a new vaccine against the whooping-cough. I spend about 70% of my time in the laboratory, the rest of the time I am writing reports,” says Geurtsen and Fransen agrees: “Yes, because you have to assemble a lot of data before you can write a thesis.” Besides their projects the two PhD candidates tutor students who follow an internship at the NVI, they participate in courses and attend congresses.
Application process
“I have applied here because I like working on infection diseases and my wish was to work on the development of new vaccines, so this job had my name on it!” Fransen saw a job opening and he decided to respond. He was one of the candidates who were selected for an interview. “The first meeting was with the person who was going to be my mentor. After that meeting a second round took place where I had to give a presentation about one of my internships.”
Geurtsen followed another route. “I never applied for this function. This PhD position came from my internship at the university. My professor nominated me for this position to the NVI.”
Qualities
What qualities are important for this position? Fransen explains “I think the quality that is most important goes for every position: enthusiasm. You really have to enjoy your work. I think that especially goes for PhD candidates because it is hard work.” Geurtsen adds that it is also very important to be creative and that one has to be able to work together with co-workers, “I think I owe this job to the fact that I have shown during my internship that I have the qualities needed to complete the research.”
Likes and dislikes
Geurtsen: “what I like most about my job is the flexibility, the challenge and the good future perspectives.” Geurtsen also appreciates the high degree of international cooperation and interaction in the scientific world. “This way I can experience more of the world than when I would in an average job. I like it that you get a lot of experimental freedom at the NVI and that there is so much knowledge here.”
Fransen enjoys most that he is responsible for his own project and that he is working on the discovery of something that was not known before. “It sounds a bit like ‘saving the world’, but I like to contribute to something positive. Here that means developing new vaccines.” In the future Fransen wants to carry out a part of his research abroad. Geurtsen has not determined yet what he would like to do next: “it all has positive and negative sides: staying in the
Differences with university
Fransen and Geurtsen have both first experienced working for a university, as an intern, before starting at a research institute. Geurtsen: “Since I started working for the cooperation between the university and the NVI I noticed differences between the two institutions. At the university you have a great turnover of staff. Students come and go, but also the scientific staff changes quickly.” An explanation is given by Fransen: “Probably that is because at the university they work in projects, at the NVI most people have a permanent job.”
Another difference the two men noticed is that universities have more contacts with institutions abroad and that more foreigners are working at universities. This international aspect is missed at the research institutes.
Geurtsen noticed that at the NVI there is more regulation than at the university. “You can clearly feel that decisions and processes follow a structured path at the NVI. There are also much more internal meetings and deliberations.”
Concerning the work, at universities you have more freedom to navigate your research and it has a more fundamental nature. Fransen: “the practical application plays only a minor part at universities, here we always keep our goal in mind; that is to develop vaccines.”
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